Tribunal de Gaia Sentences Patrocínio Azevedo to Eight Years and Six Months for Aggravated Passive Corruption — Operação Babel Closes Its First Trial With Four Convictions, Two Acquittals and a €40 Million Illicit-Gain Calculation

The Tribunal de Vila Nova de Gaia today read its decision in Operação Babel, sentencing former Vila Nova de Gaia vice-mayor Patrocínio Azevedo to eight years and six months in prison for aggravated passive corruption, with an accessory sanction of an eight-year ban from public office. The reading had been postponed from 24 April after a Ministério Público magistrates' strike, and lands as the first trial outcome in a file the prosecution opened in 2024 against sixteen defendants linked to the alleged manipulation of urban-planning decisions in Vila Nova de Gaia.

Azevedo was the central figure in the indictment. The MP had asked for a sentence of between 8 and 12 years and a six-year disqualification; the bench landed mid-range on prison time and added two years on the public-office ban. He was convicted on five counts of passive corruption, four of prevarication, and a clutch of other charges including economic participation in business, influence peddling, abuse of power, money laundering and undue acceptance of advantage.

The other convicted defendants

Three further convictions landed alongside Azevedo. Property developer Paulo Malafaia received seven years in prison and a fine of approximately €246,000. Israeli businessman Elad Dror, founder of the Fortera group, was sentenced to six years and ordered to pay more than €3 million. Lawyer João Pedro Lopes received seven years and nine months and a fine exceeding €500,000.

The bench acquitted Luísa Aparício, the former director of urbanism at the Câmara Municipal de Gaia, and Spanish economist Jordi Busquets, of all charges.

The €40 million illicit-gain calculation and the €300 million property pipeline

According to the 2024 indictment, the sixteen defendants charged in Operação Babel allegedly secured roughly €40 million in economic advantages through the manipulation of licensing and planning processes for property projects in Vila Nova de Gaia, with the underlying property interests valued at around €300 million. The investigation centred on the alleged twisting of municipal rules and licence instructions to favour developers tied to high-density, large-scale schemes, in exchange for cash and material benefits including watches.

Prosecutors built much of their case on the relationship between Dror and Malafaia, who, according to the MP, agreed to develop projects in Vila Nova de Gaia including Skyline / Centro Cultural e de Congressos, Riverside and Hotel Azul, supported by alleged favours from Azevedo, who allegedly received money and goods in return.

The mayor remains an arguido

Today's decision closes the first trial chapter but does not close the file. Eduardo Vítor Rodrigues, the current mayor of Vila Nova de Gaia, was constituted as an arguido in May 2023 and had his mobile phone seized as part of the same investigation. That parallel branch remains open. Today's headline names — Azevedo, Malafaia, Dror, Lopes — are now subject to appeal, and any defendant can take the conviction to the Tribunal da Relação do Porto.

Why this matters

Operação Babel was one of the largest municipal-corruption investigations of the 2020s in Portugal, and its first verdict will set the framing for the parallel files that follow. For Gaia — Portugal's third-largest municipality by population — the immediate question is operational: a sitting mayor under arguido status and a former vice-mayor sentenced to almost a decade for selling licensing decisions. For property developers operating in northern Portugal, today's outcome puts a number on the cost of the kind of behaviour the indictment described, and clarifies that the corrupção passiva agravada charge can carry an eight-year-plus sentence even when the underlying scheme is paused at the licensing stage.